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Screening should be offered through nightclubs and sports clubs so more men are reached.

At the same time, clinics must abandon the most widely-used test for chlamydia which "scandalously" produces too many false negative results.

MPs also urge the Government to put aside an extra £30 million for sexual health.

Patients should be able to see a doctor within 48 hours, rather than the current 10 to 12 days, they say, and ministers must improve staffing at "dilapidated" clinics.

David Hinchliffe, the committee chairman, said: "We were appalled to visit one hospital where the sexual health clinic was operating out of a Portacabin and turning away 400 potentially infected patients a week through sheer lack of capacity."

MPs also criticise sex education for placing a "mistaken emphasis" on sex at the expense of young people's wider concerns about relationships.

According to today's report, syphilis rates in Britain have increased by 500 per cent in the past six years and rates for gonorrhoea have doubled. Rates for teenage pregnancy remain the highest in Europe.

At the same time, poor adherence to HIV treatments is promoting the development and transmission of resistant strains of HIV.

Although homosexual men remain at greatest risk, the number of people who have acquired the infection heterosexually has risen, mostly as a result of infections caught abroad. There were around 6,500 new diagnoses in 2002.

MPs warned of their "serious concerns" that the spiralling cost of HIV drugs would continue to deplete the resources needed by support services for sexual health."

Andrew Ridley, a spokesman for the Terrence Higgins Trust, an HIV and Aids charity, said: "HIV treatment is very cost effective but nonetheless expensive. So the NHS must invest now in effective HIV prevention."

The Government estimates that the value of preventing a single onward transmission of HIV is between £500,000 and £1 million.

Hazel Blears, the public health minister, defended the Government's current sexual health and HIV strategy. She said the Government recognised the seriousness of the situation but there was "no quick fix",